E-Book: 188 English Pages

Publisher: European Union

Price: 1000 Toman

DOWNLOAD: Translation and Language Learning: The role of translation in the teaching of languages in the European Union  (Pym & Malmkjær & Plana 2013).

The active promotion of a Europe that is multilingual and multicultural largely requires that individual citizens be plurilingual or polyglot. This requires the learning of languages, but not only that. The European Council, meeting in Barcelona in March 2002, called for ‘action to improve the mastery of basic skills, in particular by teaching at least two foreign languages from a very early age’. This ‘Barcelona objective’ was then the basis for the 2003 Action Plan Promoting Language Learning and Linguistic Diversity, where the improvement of language teaching was recognised as a major element in achieving that aim. This was followed in 2006 by a report on The main pedagogical principles underlying the teaching of languages to very young learners, which offered a review of current research on language learning. In 2007 the European Framework for Key Competences for Lifelong Learning mentioned ‘mediation’ in passing but conceptualised language proficiency in terms of the four traditional basic language skills. Also in 2007 there was a more general report on The diversity of language teaching in the European Union.

Meanwhile, data on progress in language learning have been collected in the Eurydice reports on Key Data on Teaching Languages at School in Europe (2005,2008, 2012), in the Eurobarometer reports Europeans and their Languages (2006, 2012), which include information on the most common and effective ways of learning a language, and in the First European Survey on Language Competences: Final Report (European Commission 2011).